Summer reflections

As the summer break comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on how it went.

It's definitely been enlightening. My mostly recovered son didn't behave so mostly recovered while I was on vacation. As a matter of fact, he definitely had me worried for a second that I had accepted recovery as a fact a bit too soon.

Then I remembered.

Oh yeah.

I tried to stop the Valtrex again. Epic fail.

If anyone has ever had any doubt that autism is a poorly functioning biological system, all they'd have to do is take my son for a week or two and stop giving him antivirals. The difference is that big. Even in recovery he still has major ADHD issues. Having to deal with both the ADHD and autism can just be exhausting.

Got back on it and he's mostly back to normal. It will probably take until school starts to get him back to where he was.

Which brings me to another thought. My sil said something to me while I was visiting that made me realize I probably need to do a post on recovery and what it means. We were discussing water and how good Gryffin was around it and in it. And that moved on to how many children with autism drown because they have no concept of danger or drowning, or some don't feel pain or whatever it is that leads a child with autism to jump into water and drown. I told her water was still a concern for me even though I knew he was safe around water. Old habits.

She couldn't understand why I'd still be worried. She said, "But I thought you said he was recovered?"

And that's when I realized that recovery is very misunderstood. My sil is no fool. She's one smart cookie. She owns and runs a learning lab where she teaches struggling kids how to process information better and she's had ASD students. So this wasn't something I would've thought she would misunderstand. What I failed to realize is: why wouldn't she? She doesn't live with it everyday. She doesn't treat it. She doesn't research it and it doesn't engulf her life. She may not have even heard of recovery until the moment I first told her Gryffin was mostly recovered (yes, I always say "mostly recovered"). My expectation that people (anyone, not just my sil) know what I mean when I say recovered is completely unrealistic and unfair on my part.

A child recovered from autism is not necessarily issue free. Like a child with asthma, they live a mostly normal life if they have an inhaler.

So I really need to write a post on what recovery means. All the different forms and variations and how it's perceived. I'm going to post that sometime in the next week.

School is closing in on us and I feel like I haven't really had a summer. My NT son had his tonsils/adenoids removed right when we got back from vacation and that kept us homebound for a while. I wanted to do some more chelating this summer and never got around to it. Especially since I had to get Gryffin back on track with his antiviral. This summer seems to have just completely gotten away from me.

Pfffft.

At least we had some fun, though. We spent time visiting with our families and friends, something we just don't get to do enough.